600. Mary Russell Mitford to EBB
As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 3, 304–305.
Three Mile Cross,
December 15, 1837.
My dear Love,
I have only a moment in which to thank you most heartily for your very comfortable bulletin, and to beg you to continue to send good news. We are in the agony of moving ourselves and our goods and chattels to a cottage still smaller than this, two doors off, whilst this house proper is repaired and painted—the two ends which have been taken down and built up again being to be roofed in on Saturday night, which drives the saws and hammers forward to the interior, and we find that in these closets (by courtesy called rooms) the workmen and we cannot co-exist, manage how we will. You may comprehend the capacity of our new mansion when I tell you that we are to pay £2 10s. for the quarter. Dash can’t abide it; he sticks to me as if stitched to my gown skirts.
Mrs. Hofland [1] writes to me about a young American poet (Mr. Thackeray), [2] who came to England partly to see Miss Edgeworth and myself. Miss E. was very kind to him, but what I shall do about him, in the present state of our house, heaven only knows! Did I tell you that I shall have a pretty upstairs sitting-room, thirteen feet square, with a little ante-room, lined with books, both looking to the garden? I am only grieved at the expense, for though the building is done by our landlady, there must be incidental expenses—carpets, bells, stoves, &c., &c. However, it is less than moving, unless we had gone into Wales, to the house which a dear friend offered. <***>
Text: L’Estrange (1), II, 13–14.
1. Barbara Hofland, (née Wreaks, 1770–1844), authoress and wife of the landscape painter Thomas Christopher Hofland (1777–1843). She showed “great literary productiveness and ability, wrote seventy works, mostly novels, and added descriptions to her husband’s engraved sketches” (L’Estrange (1), I, 114).
2. We have been unable to identify any American poet of this name.
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